Erika teaches courses in nonfiction storytelling, digital longform, and science and medical narrative writing at the University of California, Irvine, where she is an associate professor in the Literary Journalism Program, an undergraduate degree program dedicated to studying and practicing narrative journalism.

In 2014, she published her first book, The Death Class: A True Story About Life (Simon & Schuster), which has been featured in The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, The Chicago Tribune, on NPR, MSNBC, USA Today, and others. The Death Class has been translated into Korean, Chinese, and Polish.

She has won awards from the Association of Sunday Feature Editors for her Los Angeles Times Magazine profile, "The Daughter," and from the Society for Features Journalism for her digital story, "The Girl Who Wouldn't Die." She received the Los Angeles Times Best Writing award for her stories about a new teacher's plight, a boy's dangerous journey to school and a cultural divide at a high school. She is a recipient of the American Society of Newspaper Editors Breaking News Award, and has twice been a finalist for the Livingston Award, including in 2008 for her reconstruction of the Virginia Tech shootings inside of a French class.

She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, their daughter and identical twin boys.